Rules Of The Air

1. Every takeoff is optional. Every landing is mandatory.

2. If you push the stick forward, the houses get bigger. If you pull the stick back, they get smaller. That is, unless you keep pulling the stick all the way back, then they get bigger again.

3. Flying isn't dangerous. Crashing is what’s dangerous.

4. It’s always better to be down here wishing you were up there than up there wishing you were down here.

5. The ONLY time you have too much fuel is when you’re on fire.

6. The propeller is just a big fan in front of the plane used to keep the pilot cool. When it stops, you can actually watch the pilot start sweating.

7. When in doubt, hold on to your altitude. No one has ever collided with the sky.

8. A ‘good’ landing is one from which you can walk away. A ‘great’ landing is one after which they can use the plane again.

9. Learn from the mistakes of others. You won’t live long enough to make all of them yourself.

10. You know you've landed with the wheels up if it takes full power to taxi to the ramp.

11. The probability of survival is inversely proportional to the angle of arrival. Large angle of arrival, small probability of survival and vice versa.

12. Never let an aircraft take you somewhere your brain didn't get to five minutes earlier.

13. Stay out of clouds. The silver lining everyone keeps talking about might be another airplane going in the opposite direction. Reliable sources also report that mountains have been known to hide out in clouds.

14. Always try to keep the number of landings you make equal to the number of takeoffs you've made.

15. There are three simple rules for making a smooth landing. Unfortunately no one knows what they are.

16. You start with a bag full of luck and an empty bag of experience. The trick is to fill the bag of experience before you empty the bag of luck.

17. Helicopters can’t fly; they’re just so ugly the earth repels them.

18. If all you can see out of the window is ground that’s going round and round and all you can hear is commotion coming from the passenger compartment, things are not at all as they should be.

19. In the ongoing battle between objects made of aluminium going hundreds of miles per hour and the ground going zero miles per hour, the ground has yet to lose.

20. Good judgement comes from experience. Unfortunately, the experience usually comes from bad judgement.

21. It’s always a good idea to keep the pointy end going forward as much as possible.

22. Keep looking around. There’s always something you've missed.

23. Remember, gravity is not just a good idea. It’s the law. And it’s not subject to repeal.

24.The three most useless things to a pilot are the altitude above you, runway behind you, and a tenth of a second ago.

RC pod racing!

Friday Night FPV Quad Racing from Kahnx on Vimeo.

Goddammit

Goddammit.  My video card just died.

 

Freeze-and-reboot followed by loads of red artefacts during POST followed by a PCB running at fingerprint removing temperature makes me a sad panda.  :(

Actual conversations I had with religious doorknockers on the weekend. [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

UNCLASSIFIED

Idiot brainwashed moron #1

Me:  Can you see this?  (Points at "No knock" sticker on door.)

Them:  Yes.

Me:  So why are you intruding on my privacy against my clearly expressed wishes?

Them:  Our faith tells us we must.

Me:  My faith tells me I must punch doorknockers in the face repeatedly if they ignore my sign.  If you want to introduce me to your faith, I presume you'll have no objections to my doing the same?

Idiot brainwashed moron #2

Them:  May we take a few minutes to speak to you about [our personal imaginary best friend]?

Me:  I’ll tell you what, I'm currently picking up dog shit in the yard.  I'll allow you to talk to me about whatever you like as long as you help pick up shit.  Offer lasts while dog shit does, deal?

Idiot brainwashed moron #3

Them:  May we take a few minutes to speak to you about [deluded rambling]?

Me:  From that, may I presume you have a strongly held religious faith?

Them:  Oh yes, very much so!

Me:  So if our positions were reversed and I was knocking on your door, would I have any hope of convincing you to change your faith to that of mine?

Them:  Oh no, of course not!

Me:  So why the fuck would you assume you're going to be able to change mine by doing exactly the same?

Welcome home

On August 12, 1978 NASA launched a small spacecraft called ISEE-3 to study the interaction between the earth's magnetic field and the "solar wind" emanating from the sun.

In 1997, NASA abandoned ISEE-3 due to a data link rate which had deteriorated to the point of unusability.  There has been no regular contact since, although the spacecraft remains in an orbit around the sun which occasionally brings it back near earth.  A brief carrier signal was established in 1999.

In 2008, a deep space comms network reestablished a data link with ISEE-3.  To the surprise of all, the spacecraft is still almost fully functional, and even has some propellant remaining.  The problem: the equipment involved in communicating with the spacecraft is now ancient history, and no longer exists.  NASA announced that rebuilding it was not worth the cost and that the spacecraft would be abandoned.

Enter the internet.

The original specs on the spacecraft were long since in the public domain, so a group of scientists, engineers and programmers decided to explore the option of open-sourcing control of the craft.  The ISEE-3 Reboot Project was born.

The team managed to obtain and construct the necessary communications gear (think Space Cowboys here) and somehow talked The Man into letting them install it on the Arecibo antenna.  It's basically a remodulator and power amplifier with the rest of the hardware done totally in software as wire-wrap hadn't been invented at the stage that ISEE-3 flew.

On May 29, 2014, the team successfully established a datalink with ISEE-3 and have managed to command the spacecraft into engineering mode to begin transmitting telemetry and allow debugging.  The next step is to fire an orbital adjustment burn which will place the spacecraft in an extended earth halo orbit.  if this doesn't happen by mid-June 2014, the next time we see ISEE-3 will be sometime in 2040.

Hopefully, welcome home, little fella.

Modern deadly sins

I see the Vatican has had nothing better to do with their time than update their current list of deadly sins.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/archive/news/seven-deadly-sins-becomes-14-at-least/story-e6frf7lf-1111115759198

Personally I think they're as off base and irrelevant to the modern world as ever. Here's a real list of modern sins:

Still using a Yahoo or Hotmail e-mail address.
Having Bing set as your home page.
Use of the reply all function with thinking.
Having used Geocities. Ever.
Having used Incredimail. Ever.
Production of a motherboard BIOS that is not automatically enabled for USB keyboard support.
Not seeding.
Wearing of Crocs, for any reason.
Not picking up dog shit when you walk the pets.
Thinking Facebook is important.
Making duck faces when having your photo taken.
Selfies. Ever.

New AOTW category

Starting a new Arsehole Of The Week category for really, really stupid and annoying people.  It should be a popular category.

The inaugural AOTW award winner goes to Mellisa Blakemore, who, apart from having an annoyingly trendily spelt name, is yet another one of the Flat Earth Society anti-vaccination idiots.

Mellisa[sic] is outraged, OUTRAGED I tell you, that her little snowflake's high school helped prevent him from dying horribly from assorted easily prevented contagious diseases by giving him a Gardasil innoculation.

Mellisa[sic] is particularly outraged that her express wishes were not followed, despite said snowflake giving legal consent themselves to do so.  Presumably this will continue for some time, probably around the heat death of the sun or similar, because like all similar wackos with a simplistic mindset based on paranoia and lack of logical thought, I can't see her changing her excuse for a "mind" any time soon.

“My son doesn’t comprehend that sort of stuff, they don’t actually get the other side of the story so he’s not well informed enough to make those decisions when put on the spot,” she whined.

“From a parent’s point of view, giving us consent forms then going over our heads is just abominable and terrible.”

Sorry, Mellisa[sic], but the only thing abominable here is that despite all the evidence to the contrary, you're the one indoctrinating a child with your cultist beliefs, and endangering their health by risking their lives in the name of  your personal dogma.

In a splendid display of timeliness, a study was released earlier this week showing that analysis of 1.25 million vaccine recipients revealed zero correlation between vaccination and the oft-touted boogeyman diseases of autism.

Of course, Mellisa[sic] will be the first one to be lined up at the Doctor's to get her ball of joy diagnosed with ADHD and medicated into a stupor with Ritalin when she can't cope with a few tantrums, right?

Even the Queen Flatearther herself of anti-vax Jenny McCarthy has recently begun (futile) efforts to distance herself from her illogical statements.  She's naturally hired a PR firm to spin her point of view into something she hopes will confuse most people enough to forget she's another looney wacko, but while you can sometimes head it off a bit, fundamentally you can't cure stupid - and this is a prime example.

Of course, what people like Mellisa[sic] conveniently ignore is that they're not the only people on earth, and they'll fully expect to let their little germbag virus factory interact fully with the rest of society, and then further expect society to provide taxpayer funding for the medical care when their snowflake contracts every childhood disease easily prevented.

Congratulations, Mellisa[sic].  Here's your award.